'Slumdog Millionaire' tops Oscars with eight wins

February 23, 2009|BY ROGER MOORE, The Orlando Sentinel

She had won almost every best-supporting actress honor under the sun this awards season, so the best acting job at the 81st Academy Awards might have been that of the first winner. Penelope Cruz professed shock. "Has anyone ever fainted up here? I might be the first!" The "Vicky Cristina Barcelona" star was - like all of the early winners at last night's Oscars - a heavy favorite. She had to be the least shocked woman in the Kodak Theatre. As expected, the big winner was "Slumdog Millionaire," collecting eight Oscars, including best picture and best director for Danny Boyle. "You've been so generous to us this evening," Boyle enthused. And he praised the ceremony as well. "I don't know what it played like on television, but in the room it's bloody wonderful." Hugh Jackman and the Oscar producers promised a re-invented show. And Jackman, a singing, dancing, acting triple threat, gave the show a touch of offhanded class. The Aussie proved himself a trooper, hoofing it through a vampy opening number and a time-wasting movie-musicals duet with Beyonce. There weren't going to be many surprises. Kate Winslet finally won her Oscar for "The Reader," six nominations into her career. "Wall-E," Pixar's comic commentary on consumerism and its consequences, took best animated film. "It's such an inspiration to spend time with a character who finds the beauty in everything he sees, a noble aspiration to have in times like these," said director Andrew Stanton. The most nominated film, "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button," picked up makeup, visual effects and art direction Oscars. "Milk" won best original screenplay (Dustin Lance Black) and best actor for Sean Penn (his second Oscar). "You commie, homo-loving sons of guns," Penn called the audience. "The Dark Knight," last year's biggest hit, won only two Oscars, one being sound mixing. List of Oscar winners: